Breathe In
by Mystic25
Summary: Where Dean's head was when Sam was on the floor in "Mannequin 3", trying to shake his brother back from the brink. SPOILERS from 6x15.


"Breathe In"

Mystic25

Summary: Where Dean's head was when Sam was on the floor in "Mannequin 3", trying to shake his brother back from the brink. SPOILERS from 6x15.

RATING: PG for language

DISCLAIMER: Their Erik Kripkie's, and Jensen and Jared's, I own this muffin I'm eating. It's banana nut.

A/N: This scene, gah, I had to do something with it. Dean was so, shattered, freaked out. He looked like he thought he killed Sam, it broke my heart.

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"_Just follow. If you can't see, listen. If you can't hear, feel."_

-Phillip Pullman

The Amber Spyglass

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"Sam-" the name was like broken glass slicing Dean into ribbons, because he couldn't get a response other than his own voice, he heard no breathing other than his own.

"Sam?" the name was now a question, a shaking, a whisper, a calling in the dark to find something that someone wanted to take from you. Not something trivial like objects, but something like your heart, ripped beating from your body and thrown onto the floor, where you had to watch it die, and feel the pain of it every second.

"Sam-," Dean looked around the room, around the shabbiness of the the dry rot wood, he looked for someone to help him, even when there was no one, but Dean had no sanity at that moment. Watching your brother convulse, then fall still, catatonic, there was no room for sanity, there was only room for panic.

He placed a hand to Sam's chest, trying to feel something, but there was only stillness under his hand, stillness and cotton fabric, nothing else. Dean bit back the '_No!'_ the torture word that wanted to break from him, the cold and broken sound of agony, because he had to deny it, he had to, or it would be true.

His fingers felt for the carotid pulse, resting on flesh that was still warm, still alive. He wanted to tear at the flesh when he felt only a tiny blip, something so small and fragile, it wouldn't sustain a humming bird, pump it, force it to beat soundly again. But, his hands were shaking; they could do nothing except touch Sam's hair. He held his brother in that simple movement, he carried him oiff the battlefield, and laid him down on the grass in his arms.

"SAMMY!"

"Come on, come on!" Dean shook Sam's still body. The part of him that would always be a part of Sam was keening, tearing through the bramble that was trying to built itself up to keep him away, tearing at it with bare bleeding hands to force his way through. _Please, God, not now, don't do this to me, DON'T FUCKING DO THIS TO ME!_

He couldn't live without Sam now that he remembered what it was like to live with him again, the real him. No one could live when their soul lay dying in front of them. It was a wounded painful, lonely feeling to watch something so sacred slip away from you, you wanted to breathe life into it, you wanted to hold it, you wanted to remember it whole in hopes that it would remember that feeling too, and it would stay.

Tears could be repressed only by the strongest will, and it was the strongest will that Dean Winchester was imploring to every part of him that made him alive. Because if he cried, it would be an admittance, a mourning that Sam wasn't coming back. And it wasn't fucking fair that someone should die when they had saved the existence of life itself; and it wasn't fucking fair that they wanted him to watch.

"Come on damnit!" _Don't do this to me Sam, You saved the world, you were a warrior. _His thoughts laughed to him, even as his soul was crying._ You're back man, you got to come home. Please. You're home Sammy. I can't - I can't live without you. Please-_

Eyes flickered below Dean, a shift, then they opened, they were ringed in a blazing fire that dissipated like a fizzle of ice melting in the summer sun. But they were _open_.

Sam drew in a breath, a huge lungful like he had been pulled drowning from the depths of the ocean floor. His breathing was like a song to Dean, a broken discordant sound, but the sweetest melody he had ever heard.

Dean wanted to cry, but he didn't, he touched, he felt, he didn't want to remember crying, he wanted to remember _feeling. _

"Hey, hey hey, you with me?"

Sam was nodding and gasping, he had heard Dean, and he had come back. Hell was screaming for him, tearing at him, wanting to drag him back down, but he had heard Dean's voice, louder above all the horrific screaming; and he followed it.

He hadn't been home in so long, it was the most painful part of the Cage, knowing he would never see it again, never hear it, the sound of his home again; because it wasn't a place for him it was wrapped up in a single entity, a person.

It was Dean. And when he felt himself go back there, to that fire, that torture, he screamed, he cried, because he couldn't see him.

He watched Dean, and all he could see in those eyes, the ones belonging to his older brother was: a return to life.

People lived without those they loved when they were gone, they would always mourn them; but for Sam and Dean it was entirely different. One couldn't _exist _without the other; it was the most ancient law between them.

"Come on, we gotta get you the hell out of here." Dean grabbed fistfuls of Sam's shirt, and fist fulls of Sam and pulled him up off the floor, as both of them gasped in the return of their air.

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Okay, I feel better.

My heart was spasming through this whole scene. It was so moving, so very haunting and raw, because you knew where Dean and Sam had just come from, and to be so close to having it all go bad when they're finally back together for reall, seriously me= mess all over my couch.

I have a recurring theme about Dean and Sam as each other's souls, which I totally believe they are, it's why losing each other makes them total wrecks.

Let me know about my drabble.

Thanks.


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